My friend has had a further response from the University. Below is that response and his follow-up.

Letter from Southampton University 10 March 2015

Dear XXXX

Thank you for your follow up email of 25 February, and I apologise for the delay in responding.

You have asked a number of questions, to which I hope to be able to respond.

On speakers, as I emailed on Friday, the programme for the conference
showing speakers and titles of presentations is now on line. There have
been a large number of other speakers who were approached to speak at
the conference but who were unavailable or did not wish to participate.

On funding, the cost of the 3 day conference is approximately £49,000.
This will be funded by a mixture of conference fees paid by attendees
and by donations. Donations have been received by both individuals and
organisations, and all donations for the conference will be approved in
accordance with our Gift Acceptance Policy (as is the case for any
donations to the University). Speakers are unpaid but do have their
travel and subsistence costs covered. The University will not be
providing direct funding to support the conference. However, academic
staff in the School of Law do have access to administrative support
staff available to them in carrying out their work, and a small element
of this administrative support is being used to help with the
organisation of this conference. I am sorry that I cannot give you an
estimate for the cost of this support, but it is certainly small
compared with the cost of the conference.

You mention that the University would not support an event that
challenged the legitimacy of any one of the 58 Islamic States. I wanted
to assure you that if a member of the University’s academic staff
proposed an academic event on such a subject then it would be considered
in exactly the same way as this conference, according to our Code of
Practice for ensuring freedom of speech within the law.

I hope that this provides an answer to the questions you raised.

With best wishes

Gavin Costigan

Follow up letter:

Dear Gavin

Thank you for your response.
Your comment about the speakers is curious. For the record there is not a
single participant to put the case for the existence of Israel. In a
detailed analysis here http://david-collier.com/?p=98 the author has
noted that 80% of the speakers have PUBLICLY demanded a boycott of
Israel. I believe that the other 20% can also be defined as anti-Israel.
Hence the idea – as the University continues to maintain – that somehow
this conference will consider different and balanced views is palpable
nonsense. As I said in my original letter, this is an anti-Semitic
hatefest masquerading as valid academic activity. You should be totally
ashamed of yourselves. The University’s reputation is going to be
severely damaged by this.

Finally, regarding the financing could you please clarify whether or not
the organisers are paying the full commercial cost of conference and
lecture room hire.

Yours

And for those who keep telling me anti-Zionism has nothing to do with anti-Semitism please see here.